Father Not
by DollopheadedMerlin
Summary: Elyan comforts a troubled Merlin after delicate information is revealed through slurred lips.


Merlin put his hand on his mouth and tried to muffle his sobs. He'd been harassed by the knights outside the Round Table before; he wasn't sure why it still affected him this badly. He'd managed to hold himself together the last few times. It's not like the knights knew who he was. The most they seemed to throw at him were petty insults that one gives to any scrawny stranger. Sure, they had affected him at first. After all, he was subjected to some fairly violent judgment in Ealdor on behalf of his magic and his birth. However, he soon became accustomed to it.

But now, now it was different. The other night, when Gwaine had managed to gather all of the knights along with the king and his servant in the tavern for a "quick drink", the foolish drunkard had accidentally let a delicate piece of information fall off of his slurred tongue.

The drunkest of the knights had been boasting, the more modest watching them crash into one another with great enthusiasm. It was quite a sight to see. Gwaine was swinging his mug around as usual while Percival silently seemed to have trouble containing drunken giggles. However, Gwaine seemed keen on humoring two of his knightly friends, which were not of the round table and far more judgmental and biased; Sir Uwayne and Sir Marhaus.

Uwayne had been telling an exaggerated tale of how horrific one of his father's sicknesses were in the past and how he had bravely and heroically overcome it, despite it being truthfully nothing more than a common cold. Then, Gwaine told them a tale of a lady's father who had threatened to run him through after spending a night with his treasure of a daughter. Marhaus contributed by recalling the time his parents had escaped the clutches of a deadly slave trader, though most of them guessed that the story was not true in the slightest. With all this fatherly talk going on, a tipsy Merlin wondered over, having grown bored of Arthur's fuddled insults.

"What 'ave you got ter say?" Sir Marhaus grunted, voice hoarse from drinking.

"'Bout wha'?" Merlin questioned quietly.

"We're tellin' tales 'bout our fathers and fathers before 'em!" announced Uwayne, swinging his mug about in the air.

"Wha'd yer man do?" asked a foolish Marhaus.

The servant looked utterly confused for a moment, too drunk to realize that his father's absence in his life was not common knowledge. But Gwaine pepped up soon enough, once the cogs in his glazed mind began to turn.

"Oh!" he cried. "Oh, no. Merlin here doesn't know anything 'bout his father, gentlemen!"

"Why's that?" asked Marhaus.

Merlin shrunk in on himself, a fear trickling up his spine. However, he was still too disoriented to pick out what it was that frightened him.

"Ol' Merlin here's a bastard!" Gwaine all but yelled, a dopey grin on his face.

And then the silence came. Arthur heard the jeer from across the room and came stomping up to the knight with angry eyes, ready to scold the drunkard for his filthy words towards his friend, especially in public.

Leon and Elyan, the more oriented of the knights, gave each other a look of concern as they saw Merlin quickly sober. The poor boy's face went red and his mug of ale shook in his twitching hands. His eyes darted around the room and he met the worried faces of his friends, but also the disgusted glares of strangers.

When Arthur managed to get a look at his servant, he paused in his ranting and knelt down next to where he sat.

"Merlin," he said. "Get out. Go home. I'll be there after I handle this."

The boy nervously nodded and clambered out of the room on shaking legs, shouts of insults and claims of cowardice calling out after him.

As Arthur continued his speech on how cruel and treacherous Gwaine's public claim was towards his friend, Elyan had spotted something. The two lower knights, Uwayne and Marhaus were trudging out of the tavern, whispering to each other with malign expressions.

The young knight wondered about them and followed them out the door, keeping his distance, determined to find out what they were doing.

After a while it became clear that they were headed in the general direction of the citadel, the same way Merlin would have been going. However, after the men turned a few corners, Elyan had lost them and paced the trail up and down, peeking around houses and shops to see if he could spot them.

After a short while, the knights reappeared, walking out of an alleyway between the bread maker's and a line of shops. The two men walked formally past Elyan, and Uwayne even gave him a small nod hello, before heading back in the direction of the tavern.

Alarmed, Elyan sped down the alley in search for some sign of something wrong. A terrible feeling in his gut was gnawing at his wits to find whatever was out of place.

And that's when the knight found him, Merlin curled into himself against the wall of the bakery, a hand over his eyes as he cried, and another holding his ribs.

"Merlin!" Elyan called quietly as he ran up to meet the boy. He knelt down next to him to try and see if anything was physically wrong.

The moment the servant realized that his friend was present, he frantically wiped at his eyes, desperate to hide his tears. "Elyan?" he croaked. "What are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same question," the knight replied. He noted that Merlin had a bloody nose and didn't seem to want to unravel himself.

"I was just um . . ." Merlin sniffed in an attempt to rid his voice of its stuffiness. "I was talking to Sir Uwayne about - about, uh, different kinds of hangover medicine."

"Really?" Elyan questioned, unbelieving. "Merlin what happened?" The knight reached out and tried to pry Merlin's hand from his rib.

"I'm fine!" Merlin hissed. He swatted Elyan's hand away.

"Merlin," he protested, "they beat you!"

"I'm used to it," Merlin snarled.

That stung; hit Elyan right in the heart. "Then, tell me, why is it that you're crying?"

"I'm not," Merlin lied, wiping his eyes on his sleeve and bringing his knees up closer to his chest.

"Don't lie to me Merlin," Elyan asked. "Please, just tell me what's wrong."

"I've been tousled around enough. A few kicks to the stomach don't bother me," the boy insisted.

But Elyan pleaded with his eyes and a feeble mouth of Merlin's name. The servant gave in.

"A lot of the less noble knights treat me like this," Merlin confessed. "And, back in Ealdor, I was treated the same, only worse. It's completely fine, Elyan. I know how to handle it."

"But it's different this time, isn't it?"

Merlin looked up at him with glassy eyes. "How could you know that?" he murmured.

The knight responded with a short shrug and a thin smile.

"Well, you're right," Merlin agreed, despair returning to his voice. "Ever since I came to Camelot, people seemed to forget that stupid fact about me. I'd get chased down and beat senseless day after day back in my home village, such a small town it was. Everybody knew everybody and their mother. So, naturally, everyone knew about the . . . circumstances of my birth. But I had left that all behind when I came here. It was gone! No one had to know. But now . . ." A few sobs escaped Merlin's lips and he struggled to suppress them. "Now the words got out and . . . I can't help but feel like it's all going to come back again."

Elyan sighed. "I understand Merlin. However, I'm sure Arthur will forbid anyone from ever speaking of it outside that tavern tonight," he assured with a smile. "And you must know that he, the knights, and I would never let anyone treat you that way, not under our knowledge."

Merlin nodded and sniffled, wiping the blood from his nose.

"Come on," the knight said, standing up and reaching out his hand, "let's go."

Merlin allowed the knight to lift him up off the ground and to help him walk back to the castle with what he suspected was a broken rib or two. He felt safer and more assured as they traveled slowly back together in the silence of night, if only to greet a frantic, flustered, and furious Arthur back at Gaius's chambers.


End file.
